El Paso City Council for now won't put demolition on ballot

A motion to include the wording of a petition that seeks to stop the demolition of El Paso City Hall on the May 11 ballot was rejected Tuesday in a 5-to-3 vote by the City Council. (Victor Calzada / El Paso Times)

A motion to include the language of a petition that seeks to stop the demolition of El Paso City Hall on the May 11 ballot was rejected in a 5-to-3 vote by the City Council on Tuesday.

However, the issue may not be over as the city has until March to call for the spring election and approve what will appear on the ballot.

After a long and sometimes heated discussion on whether the petition's wording was clear and whether it could be modified on the ballot, the council voted to hold off on any action for now.

City Reps. Eddie Holguin, Emma Acosta and Carl Robinson supported putting the petition language on the May ballot. Other representatives said they wanted to wait until several issues are worked out, including a January hearing on the matter in state court.

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Cindy Ramirez

Arguing that there was no need to wait, Holguin said the public should be allowed "to vote on whether or not City Hall should be demolished irregardless of the language of the petition."

The city clerk last week certified a petition by a grass-roots group opposing the demolition of City Hall. The petition's backers want voters to decide whether City Hall should be torn down.

At issue is the wording in the petition, which would have to appear on the ballot as it's written in the petition itself, Mayor John Cook said.

The petition seeks to repeal the resolution adopted by the council on June 26, allowing the city to enter into a partnership with MountainStar Sports Group and build a ballpark where City Hall now stands. The resolution -- about 300 words -- is included in the petition, which ends with the question, "Shall the City of El Paso repeal decision to demolish City Hall?"

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Also in question is the timeline, as City Hall is expected to be demolished before the May 11 election, and whether the City Charter gives the public the right to ask to repeal prior legal actions by the council.

The city's legal counsel on the ballpark-related petitions and lawsuits, Lowell Denton, said Tuesday that the right to initiative is derived solely from the City Charter itself, but that it does not provide citizens the power to repeal prior actions or reject proposed legislation through a referendum.

Denton said also that the right to initiative does not "inherently include the right to stop any lawfully authorized government actions in the interim before the election occurs."

City Rep. Steve Ortega said that many of the issues arose as a matter of having a poorly written petition.

"You have amateurs trying to craft language of legal consequence, and oftentimes this creates a mess," Ortega said.

In separate actions in September, the City Council entered into a contract with MountainStar for the lease of the ballpark, approved a ballpark development agreement that establishes a schedule for its construction, and approved tearing down City Hall as well as the Insights El Paso Science Center to make way for the $50 million ballpark.

Ortega said those actions -- and subsequent council approvals to buy buildings to relocate city offices and vacate City Hall -- were not part of the June decision the petition seeks to repeal. Ortega added that including the item on the May ballot may be a moot point because both City Hall and the Insights buildings are scheduled to be demolished as early as March 31.

The petition was the second filed by Salvador Gomez of the Coalition for Responsive Government.

The first petition had also been certified, but it was rejected by the City Council in September. The council at that time could have adopted the petition's wording as ordinance, amended it with the approval of the petitioners, or rejected it altogether.

After the council rejection, petitioners had the right to file a second petition to take the matter to voters.

City Clerk Richarda Momsen said she verified 1,635 signatures of registered voters in the second petition, surpassing the required number, 1,548.

Under the City Charter, the certification of the petition means that a proposed ordinance would go to voters on the ballot at the next election, May 11 in this case. The council has until Feb. 19 to introduce an ordinance calling for the election, and until March 1 to officially call for the election, City Attorney Silvia Borunda Firth said.

"We wanted to acknowledge the certification of the petition and explain the timeline to council," Firth said about Tuesday's discussion.

Firth recommended that the council wait to make any decisions about the May ballot until after Jan. 10, when the city is expected to be in state court. The city is now preparing a response to Gomez's request for a permanent injunction preventing the city from tearing down City Hall until after the election. The case was filed in the County Court-at-Law No. 5 on Nov. 21.

"I strenuously demand that you, City Council, take no further action to demolish City Hall or move forward with the baseball park," Gomez told the City Council on Tuesday. "I will not deviate from the mission of the petitions that were certified."

Ortega said the city will move forward with its plans to vacate and then demolish City Hall.

"City Council has already entered into a legally binding agreement with MountainStar," Ortega said. MountainStar bought the minor-league Tucson Padres team in October. "The plan is to move ahead and have a new Downtown ballpark and Triple-A baseball in El Paso by 2014."

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